The Boss's Pay

Updated April 11, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

Corporate kings lost a bit of their Midas touch in 2001. Cash compensation for business leaders fell 2.8% last year. It was the first such decline since The Wall Street Journal began tracking CEO pay in 1989. Mercer Human Resource Consulting uncovered the decrease by analyzing 350 proxy statements of major U.S. companies. Salaries and bonuses of analyzed chief executives had advanced 10% in 2000. Last year's slide contrasted sharply with a 4.4% pay increase among white-collar employees. In the Mercer survey, 148 company heads exercised stock options during 2001 for a median gain of $2,057,580, compared with...